


Of Apples and Wind

by blackhorseandthecherrytree



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:09:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackhorseandthecherrytree/pseuds/blackhorseandthecherrytree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There once was a girl who walked across the world. (There once was a girl who waited.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Apples and Wind

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

* * *

There once was a girl who walked across the world. (There once was a girl who waited.) She walked so long her shoes fell apart, and the soles of her feet grew hard and strong, and then kept walking. (She waited so long the woods grew up around her, and she became one of them, her red hair turning into leaves to match the too-soon wrinkles on her face.) She felt the sun and the air and the freedom kept her young. (She felt the bark and the roots and the branches reach into the earth, and felt as old as time itself, and as deathless.)  
  
One day the walker went into the wood. “Ah,” she said, “what a lovely apple tree!” And she reached for the fruit. But the girl who was the tree kept it out of her reach, for the fruit was her child, and she loved it dearly.  
  
The walker scratched her head. “I should be able to reach that, as sure as the wind blows,” she said thoughtfully. “But you’re keeping it for your own.” She looked at the tree, and sure enough, she could almost see a human face. “What are you, then? I’ve never seen anything like you before.”  
  
The leaves rustled. The girl screamed, voiceless, as she had screamed for several years before, and supposed she would scream for several years after.   
  
There was a corpse by the tree, the skeleton of a long-dead legionnaire, attached to its armor and forever waiting. The walker looked at the soldier, and looked at the dryad in the tree, and hmmed. “Do you know,” she said briskly, “I believe I know what you are?” She rested her hand against the tree. “Don’t worry. This’ll only hurt for a bit.”  
  
The walker took a flask of magic water out of her knapsack and began sprinkling it on the girl-tree’s roots, her branches and leaves. She left the fruit bare. The girl felt herself growing and deepening, but remaining the same. She felt alive.  
  
And then the walker got out her axe, and began cutting.  
  
The tree found that it hurt, as the walker had said it would, and it didn’t stop until the walker swung the final blow and she came crashing down. She breathed in the air of the wood and the mist of the stars.  
  
The walker touched her, and the girl saw all of space, all of time itself, and she knew that although she would always stand still, she would forever be in motion. She would no longer wait. And the walker had finally found a home.  
  
They hid the tree’s fruit inside her, safely, and then they journeyed off to explore the worlds.


End file.
